50/50

Do a Google search for "movies about cancer."  Go on, I dare you.  You will find page after page of lists for the "best" cancer movies; if you click on any of those links, though, you'll find collections of overly sentimental tripe.  I'll admit, that makes sense.  Cancer is obviously terrible and tragic and seemingly random; it's not like someone's going to make a film called "Cancer is for Assholes" or "Melanoma Wins Again."  Well, they won't make a successful film with those premises, anyway.  But cancer-themed films tend to be sappy and manipulative, not feel-good entertainment.  In other words, not very many people are going to grab some pizza and some beers and pop in a cancer flick.  50/50 may not be the movie that makes you grab some High Life and Pizza Hut, but it's probably the closest yet.  Is that a good thing?  Well, that's debatable.  How many dick jokes do you want to have in your cancer movie?

Gordon-Levitt, confessing his need for genital humor in cancer movies

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is an overly serious radio journalist in his late twenties.  He has a rude goofball for a best friend, Kyle (Seth Rogen), and a girlfriend, Rachael (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is a pretentious professional artist with questionable talent.  When Adam learns that he has a very rare form of cancer (which WebMD claims has a 50% survival rate), his life obviously begins to change.  He thought he was happy before cancer, but the emotional journey quickly takes a toll. 

On the bright side, he gained a nice hat collection

Who can he trust to take care of him?  His overbearing mother (Anjelica Huston)?  His idiot friend, who leverages Adam's illness for sympathy dates?  His embarrassingly inexperienced therapist, Katherine (Anna Kendrick)?  How about Rachael, whom he hadn't had sex with in months and who now refuses to go into the hospital with him?  Yeah, life-threatening illness can make even an average life seem like a huge bowl of soft-serve crap.  On the other hand, there are unexpected benefits to having cancer, like excellent weed, sympathy sex, and a new perspective on life.  And those are all wonderful things, provided you're on the right side of that 50%.

Not surprisingly, the bulk of 50/50's dramatic weight rests on the shoulders of Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  Thankfully, his character isn't asked to explicitly go through the stages of grief by the script, so JGL is able to surprise the audience.  

Surprise!  Adam can throw Liu Kang fireballs!

Given the subject matter, it was nice to see a main character that was convincingly and sympathetically angry, depressed, indifferent, and sometimes even funny.  Kudos to Gordon-Levitt for not hamming it up.  What surprised me most about 50/50 was how effective Seth Rogen was.  I will readily admit that I hate hate hate Rogen as a lead actor --- he basically just points out when other characters are trying to be funny --- but I really enjoyed him here.  With Gordon-Levitt representing the average guy in a bad situation, Rogen is given the freedom to be crude and funny.  Going for jokes in this story would be enough to make Rogen stand out, but his awkward, atypical way of handling things helped deliver some surprisingly emotional moments.  Even if you absolutely can't stand Rogen's trademark scene commentary (so many of his jokes are just him describing what he's seeing), there are still things to like about his performance.

Rogen's sad face looks like Rocky after a fight

Anna Kendrick was solid as the romantic interest in the film.  She does a very good job with overwhelmed characters, so this was right in her comfort zone.  I really dislike Bryce Dallas Howard (if only for her role in The Village), so I was pleased that she was never shown in a positive light in this movie; sometimes, it's nice to have a reason to dislike an actor.  Anjelica Huston was good in her brief moments onscreen, although her character's neediness sometimes overwhelmed the scenes she was in.  Character actors Matt Frewer and Phillip Baker Hall round out the cast as Adam's fellow cancer patients; Hall grabs your attention with his crotchetiness, but few actors can pull off "sickly" like Frewer.

The direction in 50/50 is not particularly striking, but I thought it was well-handled by Jonathan Levine.  There were only a few moments where his direction was truly felt --- the soft-focus/audio feedback when Adam was diagnosed was the most noticeable --- but I thought those moments were pretty effective.  The rest of the film relies on Levine to balance some pretty soul-searing emotional tragedy with jokes about getting laid.  It's a difficult task, but he pulls it off.

Actual line: "I look like Voldemort"

What I appreciated most about Levine's direction was how he dealt with some of the emotional reveals.  This is a movie about a cancer patient, so there are obviously going to be some intense, tear-welling moments, but some of the best moments came from quiet realizations; when Adam learns something that changes his attitude and it affects the viewer, it just shows how well Levine set up the contradictory idea beforehand.

50/50 doesn't bring a whole lot of novel ideas to the cancer movie sub-genre, but that's okay.  Since the path of a cancer patient is fairly predictable, that means that large chunks of the medical part of this movie are familiar.  That may be a good thing; I think the filmmakers assume the audience has at least a passing familiarity with the disease, which allows them to more or less bypass the doctor-speak and focus on the emotional repercussions.  Even though some parts of 50/50 were handled with beautiful understatement, this is still an emotionally wrenching movie.  In other words, this probably isn't a good date night flick.

...unless you want the evening to end like this

However, if a movie with serious fare being undercut by references to Seth Rogen's pubic hair grooming sounds like it's up your alley, 50/50 definitely delivers.  While I enjoyed the movie, it's probably not something I will see again in the near future.  This is probably my favorite example of how to handle serious illness in film (that I can think of off the top of my head), but it's still a hard movie for me to watch.  Most films aim to entertain, some strive to become art, but dramas about slowly dying (or maybe surviving --- no spoilers here) are difficult for me to justify watching.  It's not that I hate the movie, I just hate being put through an emotional wringer by fictional people.  In other words, I liked 50/50, even though it will never be considered the quintessential cancer movie; then again, I doubt I would want to watch any film claiming to be.

Monsters vs. Aliens

I think the "versus" movie is a fantastic idea. When you explain exactly what the movie is about in the title, you don't have to waste unnecessary time developing characters or plot, and can just get on with the fight.  Freddy vs. Jason is, obviously, the best example of this, but there are a lot of good vs. match-ups out there.  Ninjas vs Pirates: The Movie, anyone?  Yes please!

Monsters vs. Aliens, for some unknown reason, chooses not to embrace its title and instead tries to tell a story.  Big mistake.  Instead of watching animated monsters fighting animated aliens, probably ripping their innards out and using them for jump rope, viewers are treated to the girl-power tale of Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), as she learns (SPOILER!!!) that happiness does not come from living for others.  Susan, later dubbed Ginormica, is the submissive fiancee of local weatherman and swollen ego, Derek (Paul Rudd), until she is struck by a meteor on their wedding day. 

On a side note, I'd just like to say that, if you find a large object falling toward you, DO NOT turn around and run away.  You're still in the line of impact, and you might not have the best depth perception; instead, run perpendicular to the object's path and you will hopefully avoid any meteors heading your way.  You're welcome. 

Anyway, Susan became radioactive and turned into a giant.  Once again, movies prove science wrong by showing how a horrible accident inevitably leads to super powers.  Take that, science!  Susan is quickly subdued by the military and taken to a military complex that houses other monsters.  The other monsters are an amorphous blob, B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a mad scientist with a cockroach's head and abilities, Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a half-ape and half-amphibian evolutionary wonder, the Missing Link (Will Arnett), and a Chrysler Building-sized grub, Insectosaurus.  Susan is renamed Ginormica by the monsters' military liason, the R. Lee Ermy-esque General W.R. Monger (Keifer Sutherland) and is told that she is now a monster.  See, it's funny because she looks like a normal woman (albeit 100 feet tall) and they're calling her a monster.  Get it?  Well, the kids will.  Susan has a hard time accepting her new role, especially when she is told that monsters never leave their secret military complex.  Frowny face emoticon!  Things change quickly when the alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) shows up to conquer the planet.  Well, that's just his secondary goal.  What Gallaxhar really wants is the radiation that Susan has absorbed; this will return her to normal, but will give him ultimate power.  Obviously, this leads to the monsters being released to fight the alien menace; through the power of fist-fighting, Susan learns the value of self-esteem and true friends.

This movie is co-directed by Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2) and Rob Letterman (Shark Tale), and you can identify elements of their previous work here.  My major problem with Dreamworks Animation's films is their lack of depth.  Sure, they're nice, light movies for little kids, but I like cartoons, too, man!  With Pixar making such amazing movies every year, Dreamworks' stuff often pales in comparison.  Here, we get a movie whose moral is basically that girls should have their own identity and not just be accessories to successful men.  Whoa...edgy!  This soft-sell of a tale is reminiscent of Letterman's Shark Tale' and its "lying is bad" moral.  On the bright side, Conrad Vernon's presence is felt, too.  One of the main reasons Shrek 2 is my favorite Shrek is because it is not afraid to just go for jokes.  Here, both Hugh Laurie and Seth Rogen are both used very well; neither really adds much to the plot, but both are decently funny whenever they get the chance (and I hate Rogen, so that's a huge compliment).  I think these joke characters (Insectosaurus is another) are really what work best in this movie.  It's just too bad they are sprinkled through a competent, but uninspired, main plot.

The animation in this movie is as good as you would expect.  While I have my own issues with Dreamworks Animation's stories, their movies always look great.  This movie was the first computer animated movie made in the new stereoscopic 3-D, but I just saw the 2-D version and it still looked good.

The voice acting is star-studded, but a little hit-and-miss.  Reese Witherspoon may or may not be a good choice as the main character; due to the story's strengths and weaknesses, she doesn't really get an opportunity to excel.  Hugh Laurie and Kiefer Sutherland might have been playing stock characters, but they did a great job diving into their roles; it is difficult to identify them in this film.  Seth Rogen and Rainn Wilson clearly had the most fun making this movie, and it shows.  It helps that their characters are both idiots, since that doesn't stretch their acting too far from their comfort zones.  Stephen Colbert was an inspired choice to play the President of the United States, but I was a little underwhelmed by the lines given to him; there's even a couple of minutes early on where his character is on screen, but has no dialogue.  What a waste!  The rest of the cast failed to impress me.  I didn't care for Will Arnett, as the Missing Link, in particular, but Paul Rudd, Amy Pohler, Julie White, Jeffrey Tambor, Ed Helms, Renee Zellweger, and John Krasinski all made brief and unmemorable appearances in the film.

I guess the bottom line here is how likable the movie is.  Kids will absolutely enjoy the movie.  B.O.B. plays for cheap laughs and his humor is aimed at the kids.  Adults will like some of the humor, sure (my favorite was Insectosaurus), but the story is saccharine enough to cause cavities.  There are certainly worse children's movies to watch, but I don't think this one has the all-ages appeal to make it a classic.